


No Gods, No Managers

by Kleenexwoman



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Detroit, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-26 00:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/pseuds/Kleenexwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An oral history of three rock bands that never existed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Gods, No Managers

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried to do this in something approximating the style of "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk" by Legs McNeil and Gilliam McCain. I haven't tried to make the narrative converge very much with any of the X-Men movies, although of course there will be some similarities. Most of my knowledge of the comics comes from listening to friends talk about what they like or don't like in the ongoing storylines. A lot of characterization and brainstorming comes from [Wolfsheart](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfsheart/pseuds/Wolfsheart), so if you like what I've done, you might want to give her stories a look-see. This is pretty self-indulgent and I mainly am writing it because I want to create complex fictional discographies.

Erik Lehnsherr: My parents survived the fucking Holocaust. They had numbers on their arms. I was born in Detroit back when you could have a nice life in the city. 1952. My father worked in this little automotive shop, making hood ornaments for Cadillacs. My mother sold TVs in this little shop on Twelfth street. I came to work with my parents during the summer. That’s what I remember, sitting in these dusty, grimy workshops, spending time with my parents, learning how to bend metal into ornaments and wires into TVs. We lived on Dexter, right in the middle of the city. Everyone was Jewish there.

Erik: The riots started right on Twelfth street. They were smashing in windows and shit. My mother came home and she wanted us to leave, she was so scared. She thought it was another Kristallnacht. She said the blacks were coming after the Jews. All the shops on that street were Jewish-owned. My father said no, wait it out, it’ll be okay, but she wanted to leave so bad. I was very excited, I wanted to go out and join the rioters. Something was happening! It was big! It would change everything! But no. Of course they had everything that they needed to bring with them packed in five minutes. We moved out to stay with my uncle, Max Eisenhardt, in Oak Park. We never went back.

_In 1968, Erik Lenhsherr founded the garage band “Max Magnus and the Magnetons” with fellow Oak Park denizen Jason Cheyara, a.k.a. Azazel._

Erik: I met Az in high school, yeah. His parents emigrated from Russia. I don’t know how they got out of there, but it was kind of impressive. I’m this scrawny kid from Detroit, hanging out with these Oak Park snots, not making any friends, and this big, scary kid comes up to me at lunch, says in this real thick Russian accent, “People are such assholes.” Nobody picked on him, but nobody wanted to be friends with him either. So we formed a band, because what else do you do?

_Azazel could not be contacted for this series of interviews, but Erik allowed us to look through his high school journals for some perspective on this time. Unfortunately, they were all in Cyrillic, and we were unable to find a translator by publication time._

Erik: His parents were these crazy fucking Christians, I mean like really crazy. He talked about how much he hated them and how much he wanted to move out. He slept over at my house a lot. My mom loved him. She knew Russian, and she’d bake him coffeecake and they’d talk for hours while I did homework and shit. He never bothered with homework or anything, he didn’t care, he went to school because he’d get arrested if he didn’t…He dropped out and my mom was so pissed. More pissed than I think she would have gotten if I’d dropped out. I don’t know what’s in his journals, but I know he wrote a lot of poetry. Some of it was “fuck my parents, fuck the church” kind of stuff. When he dropped out, my mom made him take the room over our garage. So it was Uncle Max, Mom, Dad, me, and Az. It was like fucking “Happy Days.”

Erik: You can’t have a band with two people. I started putting up flyers all over town looking for a third. Nobody called for months. Then finally one day, my mom calls me into the house, says there’s a girl on the phone for me…I didn’t have any girlfriends, nobody liked me at school, so I was like, what the fuck who is it? And I answer the phone, and it’s this Mexican-sounding chick going, “Hey, you said you were looking for a drummer?” I nearly hung up, I thought it was a joke, but I’m so fucking glad I didn’t.

Angel Salvadore: I was a stripper, alright? I’m not fucking ashamed of it. I lived on the southwest side with my family, they didn’t know what I did for a living. I stripped at this club on Six Mile, way away from where anyone I knew would go. Most of the girls I worked with were just trying to make a living, too. A lot of them were moms already, they just wanted to find a nice man who’d pretend they never took their clothes off for a living. I was like, fuck that. I didn’t want kids. If I wasn’t working, I’d go with my friends and we’d go see whatever band was playing at the Hideout. I wanted to be in a band. I bought a set of drums ‘cause they sounded easiest to learn.

Angel: I didn’t see the Magnetons at the Hideout, no. I don’t think they ever played anywhere except Edie’s garage before I joined. I just saw this shitty little index card on a cork board at the Hideout, some band wanting a drummer, and I pocketed it quick before anyone else saw it. I kept it for a month before I called.

Erik: Angel was the hottest girl I’d ever seen. Me and Az are hanging around the garage looking like fucking greasers, and she shows up in this miniskirt and leather jacket with her drum kit.

Angel: I know how to talk to mamas. You just be nice. Erik was scared I’d piss off his mom, but she was so nice. I show up at the house, and they have this big piano in the living room, and I sit down at it, and Edie makes me learn how to play because she says it’s a nice instrument for a girl to learn. I’m like, hey, free piano lessons. She also offered to actually make me a skirt that would go past my knees. I said no.

Erik: So we had a stripper in our band. I wanted to advertise with that, but Angel said no.

Angel: Word got around I was a stripper anyway. Guys who go to strip clubs also go to rock concerts, you know?

Erik: We booked our first show at the Grande Ballroom. I was so nervous I nearly threw up right before showtime. We had no idea what to do, we only had six songs we’d written.

Angel: We definitely got beers thrown at us. Erik freaked out and almost stopped playing, it was so funny, but we made him stay onstage. I’m used to that kind of shit from an audience, so I just stayed on the drums. I never missed a beat. Azazel started catching the cans and throwing them back, which people fucking loved. By the end of the night, we had 300 fans.

Erik: We were terrible. It was this insane crowd, just a bunch of assholes, and Azazel started whipping shit at people who would boo us or throw things at us. I was sure we were going to be kicked out before out last song and told to never come back. But the manager loved us…he asked if we could play again.

Erik: That’s when we finally cut our first record. We pooled our money and found a place that would give us a recording studio and help us cut an album. Of course, it was our job to actually sell it to record stores, they weren’t going to any of that for us. We bought about 300 copies and lugged about half of them to some shops around Oak Park, and decided we’d sell the rest at shows.

_The first Max Magnus and the Magnetons album was put out on Marvel Records, a small Detroit label known for novelty albums and garage rock, specializing in vanity projects. It listed “Max Magnus, vocals and guitar”, “Azazel, vocals and bass”, and “Angel, vocals, drums, and piano”. The cover of the album featured a crudely drawn U-shaped magnet surrounded by a halo of lightning bolts. It was simply titled “Max Magnus and the Magnetons.”_

Peter Parker (rock critic, writer for CREEM): The first Max Magnus album features a unique sound, a mix of Ramones-style punk rock and Motown swing. It comes off as a crude garage blues band, but of course it’s much more than that. It’s a fascinating collaborative effort by three people with three very different aesthetics. Max Magnus brings in a classic garage rock sound and vocals very much based on the “meathead” sound of Handsome Dick Manitoba, while Azazel contributes with a raw and jagged bassline that’s way ahead of its time and an incredible death metal growl decades before the genre was invented, and Angel brings in that Motown jazziness and some steady supporting vocals, although her voice and input would be featured much more prominently on the next album. But there’s a lot of anger in the lyrics, and it’s clear that most of that is Max Magnus. Check out the lyrics from their first song, “Color TV”:

_The city’s in chaos_  
 _The sky’s filled with flame_  
 _Pigs are smashing our heads in_  
 _It’s all just a game_  
 _We’re smashing our shackles_  
 _The brothers are free_  
 _And I’m smashing this shop window_  
 _For my color TV_

_Color TV, color TV,_  
 _Smashing in windows_  
 _For my color TV_

_The city is burning_  
 _The spirit’s alive_  
 _The Army is rolling_  
 _Tanks down I-75_  
 _There’s blood in the streets_  
 _Let the citizens flee_  
 _And I’m watching it all_  
 _On my color TV_

_Color TV, color TV,_  
 _I’m watching it all_  
 _On my color TV_

Peter Parker: It’s a good first album. The sound is rough, but you can hear the beginnings of the rock ‘n’ roll powerhouse that would come out of the Max Magnus trio, and the edgy, satirical lyrics that lead into the raw anger the band later became known for. I remember listening to it for the first time and thinking, “Yeah, this is a band to watch out for.”

Erik: We got a short review in CREEM from Peter Parker, which was a big deal. I remember Az bringing in the issue it was in, crowding around it, and toasting our success with cheap beer. It was only a few sentences. “Max Magnus and the Magnetons are a good time and a band to watch out for.” No, that was the entire review, now that I think about it.

Angel: We didn’t get famous overnight. Some people who’d seen us at the Grande Ballroom bought the album, including Peter Parker. We got booked at a few more places, some bars and basement shows.

Erik: I graduated and I didn’t have a job, Az didn’t have a job, Angel was the only one of us who did…I wanted to go back to the grille factory, but my mother wouldn’t let me do it. She was scared of Detroit from then on. She never went into the city at all, not even to visit her friends. They had to come out to Oak Park if they wanted to see her. I liked the grille factory, I knew people there, but no.

Angel: It’s not like it would have been hard to get a job. Erik kept saying that he didn’t want to flip burgers, he wanted to do something meaningful. I’m like, you know, fuck you, I take my clothes off for money, it’s not beneath your goddamn dignity to flip burgers. But he was kind of a hippie, even though he never would have admitted it.

Erik: I flipped burgers at the Hunter House on Woodward for a week, all right? I hated it. I quit after I made a dozen burgers for a bunch of drunks, and they dine-n-dashed, and my manager made me make it up out of my own paycheck. It was bullshit. So I threw my hat and apron at him and walked out.

Angel: So then we couldn’t even go to the Hunter House.

Erik: I started hanging out at the Tel-Way over on the east side. That’s where all the suburban greasers hung out. I got at a job at a garage on Vinsetta, fixing cars…but we kept trying to book shows, as often as we could. I didn’t want to be a grease monkey forever. I tried to get Az a job there too, but he was shit with cars.

Angel: I kept taking nights off because I had shows to play. My manager didn’t like that. The busiest nights for strip clubs are also the busiest nights for rock shows, who’dathunkit?

Erik: We both got fired the same week. And we had two shows that week, and I just went…let’s just go on tour. Why not? Let’s start booking shows everywhere we can.

Angel: We got a lot of gigs in Ann Arbor, and a few in Bay City. I liked Ann Arbor a hell of a lot. Lots of college kids coming out to see the rough kids from Detroit. Lots of weed, not as much booze, so everyone was too stoned to make any trouble. Az always found someone who’d give him a joint, and he’d get high and grab the mic from Erik and just growl into it in the middle of songs. People thought that was hilarious. After the shows, we’d go to Pinball Pete’s and Erik would get pissed off at the pinball machines. Fucking great.

Erik: It was spring of 1969, and we got a call from Aaron Russo of the Kinetic Playground in Chicago. I mean, this was a big thing. Everyone played there, everyone famous. And they wanted our shitty little band from the suburbs of Detroit!

Angel: That’s when I knew we were on our way.

**Author's Note:**

> References: 
> 
> 1) The Twelfth street and Dexter areas of Detroit were heavily Jewish neighborhoods. Twelfth street was where the 1967 riots started.   
> 2) Oak Park is a very Jewish suburb of Detroit.   
> 3) The Southwest side of Detroit is known as "Mexicantown" and is heavily populated by Hispanic and Latino families.   
> 4) Many of the major streets in the Detroit metro area are numbered and are known as "Mile Roads." Six Mile is two miles south of Eight Mile, the street which marks the northern border of Detroit.   
> 5) The Hideout was a popular teen music club in the 1960s, located in Harper Woods, a suburb of Detroit. There is another place with that name now located in Clawson.   
> 6) The Grande Ballroom was another popular venue on Grand River, one of the major thoroughfares of Detroit.   
> 7) CREEM was a popular rock news and critique magazine. Lester Bangs wrote for it, and its offices were located in Birmingham, Michigan.   
> 8) Handsome Dick Manitoba was the lead singer of the Dictators. Both the Ramones and the Dictators put out their first albums in the mid 1970s but took their sonic inspiration from garage rock of the 1950s and 1960s.   
> 9) The Hunter House is a burger joint on Woodward Avenue and was a popular hangout for cruisers, teens who would drive their cars up and down Woodward at night.   
> 10) The Tel-Way is another burger joint, located on Telegraph Road, and was a hangout for greasers.   
> 11) The Vinsetta Garage is now a very popular dining spot on Woodward Avenue.   
> 12) Ann Arbor is a college town near to the Detroit metro area. Bob Seger is from there! Pinball Pete's is still a popular establishment.   
> 13) Bay City has the most bars per capita of any town in the United States.   
> 14) The Kinetic Playground was a short-lived and very famous rock venue in Chicago. It has recently been resurrected.


End file.
